The New Book of Martyrs by Georges Duhamel

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Title: The New Book Of Martyrs

Author: Georges Duhamel

Translator: Florence Simmonds

Release Date: January 12, 2010 [EBook #4325]
Last Updated: January 26, 2013

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks, David Widger
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THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS

By Georges Duhamel

Translated by Florence Simmonds

Contents

THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS

THROUGHOUT OUR LAND

THE
STORY
OF
CARRE
AND

LERONDEAU

MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS

THE DEATH OF MERCIER

VERDUN

THE SACRIFICE

THE THIRD SYMPHONY

GRACE

NIGHTS IN ARTOIS

THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS

THROUGHOUT OUR LAND

From the disfigured regions where the cannon reigns supreme, to the mountains of the South, to the ocean, to the glittering shores of

the inland sea, the cry of wounded men echoes throughout the land, and a vast kindred cry seems to rise responsive from the whole
world.

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding. Not one which has not accepted the duty

of assuaging something of the sum of suffering, just as it bears its part in the sum of mourning; not one which may not hear within its
own walls an echo of the greater lamentation swelling and muttering where the conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The waves of war
break upon the whole surface of the country, and like the incoming tide, strew it with wreckage.

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate. The beds are white, the

bandages are spotless; many faces smile until the hour when they are flushed with fever, and until that same fever makes a whole nation
of wounded tremble on the Continent.

Some one who had been visiting the wounded said to me: "The beds are really very white, the dressings are clean, all the patients

seem to be playing cards, reading the papers, eating dainties; they are simple, often very gentle, they don't look very unhappy. They all
tell the same story... The war has not changed them much. One can recognise them all."

Are you sure that you recognise them? You have just been looking at them, are you sure that you have seen them?
Under their bandages are wounds you cannot imagine. Below the wounds, in the depths of the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and

furtive, is stirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which does not readily reveal itself, which expresses itself artlessly, but which I would fain
make you understand.

In these days, when nothing retains its former semblance, all these men are no longer those you so lately knew. Suffering has roused

them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more than themselves;
those we loved were merely happy shadows.

Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their slightest gestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of them together,

now and later, when we realise the misery of the times and the magnitude of their sacrifice.

THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU

They came in like two parcels dispatched by the same post, two clumsy, squalid parcels, badly packed, and damaged in transit.

Two human forms rolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into strange instruments, one of which enclosed the whole man, like a

coffin of zinc and wire.

They seemed to be of no particular age; or rather, each might have been a thousand and more, the age of swaddled mummies in the

depths of sarcophagi.

We washed, combed, and peeled them, and laid them very cautiously between clean sheets; then we found that one had the look of

an old man, and that the other was still a boy.

Their beds face each other in the same grey room. All who enter it notice them at once; their infinite misery gives them an air of

kinship. Compared with them, the other wounded seem well and happy. And in this abode of suffering, they are kings; their couches
are encircled by the respect and silence due to majesty.

I approach the younger man and bend over him.
"What is your name?"
The answer is a murmur accompanied by an imploring look. What I hear sounds like: Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations.
It takes me a week to discover that the boyish patient is called Marie Lerondeau.
The bed opposite is less confused. I see a little toothless head. From out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone,

but touching and almost melodious. The man who lies there is called Carre.

They did not come from the same battlefield, but they were hit almost at the same time, and they have the same wound. Each has a

fractured thigh. Chance brought them together in the same distant ambulance, where their wounds festered side by side. Since then
they have kept together, till now they lie enfolded by the blue radiance of the Master's gaze.

He looks at both, and shakes his head silently; truly, a bad business! He can but ask himself which of the two will die first, so great

are the odds against the survival of either.

The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his hand the cunning knife.
We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the

flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.

So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein each man resembles his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon

the struggle. We have laid our grasp upon these two bodies; we shall not let them be snatched from us easily.

The nausea of the awakening, the sharp agony of the first hours are over, and I begin to discover my new friends.
This requires time and patience. The dressing hour is propitious. The man lies naked on the table. One sees him as a whole, as also

those great gaping wounds, the objects of so many hopes and fears.

The afternoon is no less favourable to communion, but that is another matter. Calm has come to them, and these two creatures have

ceased to be nothing but a tortured leg and a screaming mouth.

Carre went ahead at once. He made a veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeau seemed still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor,

Carre was already enfolding me in a deep affectionate gaze. He said:

"You must do all that is necessary."
Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half articulate phrase:
"Mustn't hurt me."
As soon as I could distinguish and understand the boy's words, I called him by his Christian name. I would say:
"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased with you, Marie."
This familiarity suits him, as does my use of "thee" and "thou" in talking to him. He very soon guessed that I speak thus only to those

who suffer most, and for whom I have a special tenderness. So I say to him: "Marie, the wound looks very well today." And every one
in the hospital calls him Marie as I do.

When he is not behaving well, I say:
"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau."
His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I was obliged to try "Monsieur Lerondeau," and he was so hurt that I had to retract on the

spot. However, he now refrains from grumbling at his orderly, and screaming too loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he knows
that the day I say to him "Be quiet, Monsiuer"—just Monsiuer—our relations will be exceedingly strained.

From the first, Carre bore himself like a man. When I entered the dressing ward, I found the two lying side by side on stretchers

which had been placed on the floor. Carre's emaciated arm emerged from under his blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the
subject of hope and courage.... I listened to the quavering voice, I looked at the toothless face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious
choking in my throat, while Lerondeau blinked like a child who is being scolded. Then I went out of the room, because this was a
matter between those two lying on the ground, and had nothing to do with me, a robust person, standing on my feet.

Since then, Carre has proved that he had a right to preach courage to young Lerondeau.
While the dressing is being prepared, he lies on the ground with the others, waiting his turn, and says very little. He looks gravely

round him, and smiles when his eyes meet mine. He is not proud, but he is not one of those who are ready to chatter to every one. One
does not come into this ward to talk, but to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to suffer as decently as possible.

When he is not quite sure of himself, he warns me, saying:
"I am not as strong as usual to-day."
Nine times, out of ten, he is "as strong as usual," but he is so thin, so wasted, so reduced by his mighty task, that he is sometimes

obliged to beat a retreat. He does it with honour, with dignity. He has just said: "My knee is terribly painful," and the sentence almost
ends in a scream. Then, feeling that he is about to howl like the others, Carre begins to sing.

The first time this happened I did not quite understand what was going on. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the

pain in my knee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament was becoming a real melody, and for five long minutes Carre
improvised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain in his knee." Since then this has become a habit, and he begins to sing
suddenly as soon as he feels that he can no longer keep silence.

Among his improvisations he will introduce old airs. I prefer not to look at his face when he begins: "Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon

verre." Indeed, I have a good excuse for not looking at it, for I am very busy with his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, and has
to be handled with infinite precautions.

I do "all that is necessary," introducing the burning tincture of iodine several times. Carre feels the sting; and when, passing by his

corner an hour later, I listen for a moment, I hear him slowly chanting in a trembling but melodious voice the theme: "He gave me
tincture of iodine."

Carre is proud of showing courage.
This morning he seemed so weak that I tried to be as quick as possible and to keep my ears shut. But presently a stranger came into

the ward. Carre turned his head slightly, saw the visitor, and frowning, began to sing:

"Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
The stranger looked at him with tears in his eyes but the more he looked, the more resolutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of

the table with his two quivering hands.

Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre has nothing but black stumps. This distresses me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs

good teeth.

Lerondeau is still at death's door, but though moribund, he can eat. He attacks his meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with animal

energy, and seems to fasten upon anything substantial.

Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; but what can he do with his old stumps?
"Besides," he says, "I was never very carnivorous."
Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view of lying perpetually upon his back, he arranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his

chest; the cigarette ash falls into this, and Carre smokes without moving, in cleanly fashion.

I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, emaciated face, and reflect sadly that it is not enough to have the will to live; one must have

teeth.

Not every one knows how to suffer, and even when we know, we must set about it the right way, if we are to come off with

honour. As soon as he is on the table, Carre looks round him and asks:

"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head to-day?"
If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously:
"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?"
Then a nurse approaches, takes his head between her hands and presses.... I can begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his

head" Carre is good.

Lerondeau's method is different. He wants some one to hold his hands. When there is no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall."
It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid table, and that he need not be afraid. He gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, the

sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know I shall fall." Then I get some one to come and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, is a
reality....

Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when the dressing is going on. The poor have only one, a simple cry that does service for

them all. It makes one think of the women who, when they are bringing a child into the world, repeat, at every pain, the one complaint
they have adopted.

Carre has a great many varied cries, and he does not say the same thing when the dressing is removed, and when the forceps are

applied.

At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, the pain in my knee!"
Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes his head and repeats:
"Oh, that wretched knee!"
When it is the turn of the thigh, he is exasperated.
"Now it's this thigh again!"
And he repeats this incessantly, from second to second. Then we go on to the wound under his heel, and Carre begins:
"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?"
Finally, when he is tired of singing, he murmurs softly and regularly:
"They don't know how that wretched knee hurts me... they don't know how it hurts me."
Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a little boy compared with Carre, is very poor in the matter of cries. But when he hears his

complaints, he checks his own cries, Borrows them. Accordingly, I hear him beginning:

"Oh, my poor knee!... They don't know it hurts!"
One morning when he was shouting this at the top of his voice, I asked him gravely:
"Why do you make the same complaints as Carre?"
Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me a face that was really offended:
"It's not true. I don't say the same things."

I said no more, for there are no souls so rugged that they cannot feel certain stings.
Marie has told me the story of his life and of his campaign. As he is not very eloquent, It was for the most part a confused murmur

with an ever-recurring protestation:

"I was a good one to work, you know, strong as a horse."
Yet I can hardly imagine that there was once a Marie Lerondeau who was a robust young fellow, standing firm and erect between

the handles of a plough. I know him only as a man lying on his back, and I even find it difficult to picture to myself what his shape and
aspect will be when we get him on his feet again.

Marie did his duty bravely under fire. "He stayed alone with the wagons and when he was wounded, the Germans kicked him with

their heavy boots." These are the salient points of the interrogatory.

Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, and he looks up to the ceiling, for this takes the place of distance and horizon to those

who lie upon their backs. After a long, light silence, he looks at me again, and repeats:

"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone with the wagons!"
True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I take care to let people know it. When strangers come in during the dressings, I show

them Marie, who is making ready to groan, and say:

"This is Marie—Marie Lerondeau, you know. He has a fractured thigh, but he is a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with the

wagons."

The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and Marie controls himself. He blushes a little, and the muscles of his neck swell with pride.

He makes a sign with his eyes as if to say: "Yes, indeed, alone, all alone with the wagons." And meanwhile, the dressing has been
nearly finished.

The whole world must know that Marie stayed alone with the wagons. I intend to pin a report of this on the Government pension

certificate.

Carre was only under fire once, and was hit almost immediately. He is much annoyed at this, for he had a good stock of courage,

and now he has to waste it within the walls of a hospital.

He advanced through a huge beetroot field, and he ran with the others towards a fine white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he fell! His

thigh was fractured. He fell among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged earth.

Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, and said to him:
"We are going back to our trench, they shall come and fetch you later."
Carre merely said:
"Put my haversack under my head."
Evening was coming on; he prepared, gravely, to spend the night among the beetroots. And there he spent it, alone with a cold

drizzling rain, meditating seriously until morning.

It was fortunate that Carre brought such a stock of courage into hospital, for he needs it all. Successive operations and dressings

make large drafts upon the most generous supplies.

They put Carre upon the table, and I note an almost joyful resolution in his look. To-day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce."
But just to-day, I have but little to do, not much suffering to inflict. He has scarcely knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten up the

apparatus again.

Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a smile, and he exclaims:
"Finished already? Put some more ether on, make it sting a bit at least."
Carre knows that the courage of which there was no need to-day will not, perhaps, be available to-morrow.
And to-morrow, and for many days after, Carre will have to be constantly calling up those reserves of the soul which help the body

to suffer while it waits for the good offices of Nature.

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to

do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

This leg, infected to the very marrow, seems to be slowly devouring the man to whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, and the

white-haired Master fixes two small light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed to appraise the things of life, yet, for the moment,
hesitant.

I speak to Carre in veiled words of the troublesome, gangrenous leg. He gives a toothless laugh, and settles the question at once.
"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, we shall have to get rid of it."
After this consent, we shall no doubt make up our minds to do so.
Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily towards healing.
Lying on his back, bound up in bandages and a zinc trough, and imprisoned by cushions, he nevertheless looks like a ship which the

tide will set afloat at dawn.

He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to say, he seems to get lighter and lighter. He is learning not to groan, not because his frail soul is

gaining strength, but because the animal is better fed and more robust.

His ideas of strength of mind are indeed very elementary. As soon as I hear his first cry, in the warm room where his wound is

dressed, I give him an encouraging look, and say:

"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!"
Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, and asks:

"Ought I to say 'By God!'?"
The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered leg has been lying has lost its shape; it has become oxydised and is split at the edges; so I

have decided to change it.

I take it away, look at it, and throw it into a corner. Marie follows my movements with a scared glance. While I am adjusting the

new trough, a solid, comfortable one, but rather different in appearance, he casts an eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his eyes
fill with copious tears.

This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there are no small things.
Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it will be a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the

new trough, and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms which only a connoisseur can understand or invent.

Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his body by the generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him save

his eyes and his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse. Throughout the winter days and the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were
dragging along a derelict.

He strains at it... with his poignant songs and his brave words which falter now, and often die away in a moan.
I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of work to be got through, and the cramped quarters made this

necessary. Marie was grave and attentive as if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was a lesson in patience and courage. But all at
once, the teacher broke down. In the middle of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in spite of himself, began to complain without
restraint or measure, giving up the struggle in despair.

Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that Marie was listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost all

sense of shame.

Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:
"Carre!..."
And he added:
"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad."
Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his

heel; but the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly for Carre.

And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal.
But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own turn.
He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been shaken and are unusually irritable.
At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor devils!" which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-pity. And

then, all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not heard him scream for a long time. He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening his mouth
widely, and shrieking with all the strength of his lungs, and with all the strength of his face, it would seem, for it is flushed and bathed in
sweat. He screams unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an incoherent and disorderly fashion.

Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with gentle and compassionate words, I raise my voice suddenly and order the boy to be

quiet, in a severe tone that admits of no parleying...

Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a bubble at the touch of a finger. The ward still rings with my imperious order. A good lady

who does not understand at once, stares at me in stupefaction.

But Marie, red and frightened, controls his unreasonable emotion. And as long as the dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously

to prevent him from suffering in vain, just as others hold and grasp his wrists.

Then, presently, it is all over. I give him a fraternal smile that relaxes the tension of his brow as a bow is unbent.
A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came to visit the wounded. She exhaled such a strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have

distinguished the odour of suffering that pervades this place.

Carre was shown to her as one of the most interesting specimens of the house. She looked at him with a curious, faded smile,

which, thanks to paint and powder, still had a certain beauty.

She made some patriotic remarks to Carre full of allusions to his conduct under fire. And Carre ceased staring out of the window to

look at the lady with eyes full of respectful astonishment.

And then she asked Carre what she could send him that he would like, with a gesture that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth

and the glory of them.

Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; he considered for a moment and then said modestly:
"A little bit of veal with new potatoes."
The handsome lady thought it tactful to laugh. And I felt instinctively that her interest in Carre was suddenly quenched.
An old man sometimes comes to visit Carre. He stops before the bed, and with a stony face pronounces words full of an

overflowing benevolence.

"Give him anything he asks for.... Send a telegram to his family."
Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? I have no one but my poor old mother; it would frighten her."
The little old gentleman emerges from his varnished boots like a variegated plant from a double vase.
Carre coughs—first, to keep himself in countenance, and, secondly, because his cruel bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him a

shaking.

Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his medals hang out from his tunic like little dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing and

pouting, without removing his gold-trimmed KEPI, and lays a deaf ear on Carre's chest with an air of authority.

Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole limb has gone, leaving a huge and dreadful wound level with the trunk.
It is very surprising that the rest of Carre did not go with the leg.
He had a pretty hard day.
O life! O soul! How you cling to this battered carcase! O little gleam on the surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it die down and

kindle again. And it seemed too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever to reflect anything again save suffering, weakness, and
despair.

During the long afternoon, I go and sit between two beds beside Lerondeau. I offer him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that we

say nothing, or very little.... But it is not necessary to speak when one has a talk with Lerondeau.

Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what he likes still better is that I should come and sit by him for a bit. When I pass through the

ward, he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, as one taps upon a bench to invite a friend to a seat.

Since he told me about his life at home and his campaign, he has not found much to say to me. He takes the cakes with which his

little shelf is laden, and crunches them with an air of enjoyment.

"As for me," he says, "I just eat all the time," and he laughs.
If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. Then there is an agreeable silence. Marie looks at me, and begins to laugh again. And

when I get up to go, he says: "Oh, you are not in such a great hurry, we can chat a little longer!"

Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business that it is now permanently shorter than the other by a good twelve centimetres. So at least

it seems to us, looking down on it from above.

But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from afar by raising his head a little above the table while his wounds are being dressed, has

noticed only a very slight difference in length between his two legs.

He said philosophically:
"It is shorter, but with a good thick sole...."
When Marie was better, he raised himself on his elbow, and he understood the extent of his injury more clearly.
"I shall want a VERY thick sole," he remarked.
Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can estimate the extent of the damage from above; but he is happy to feel life welling up

once more in him, and he concludes gaily:

"What I shall want is not a sole, but a little bench."
But Carre is ill, terribly ill.
That valiant soul of his seems destined to be left alone, for all else is failing.
He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and swollen.
He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one of them is covered with abscesses.
The joy of breathing no longer exists for Carre, for his cough shakes him savagely in his bed.
The back, by means of which we rest, has also betrayed him. Here and there it is ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie perpetually

on his back, but only to lie and sleep on it after a day of toil.

For man was not really intended to suffer with his miserable, faithless body!
And his heart beats laboriously.
There was mischief in the bowel too. So much so, that one day Carre was unable to control himself, before a good many people

who had come in.

In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly assurances, Carre was so ashamed that he wept. He who always said that a man ought

not to cry, he who never shed a tear in the most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame on account of this accident. And I could not
console him.

He no longer listens to all we say to him. He no longer answers our questions. He has mysterious fits of absence.
He who was so dignified in his language, expresses himself and complains with the words of a child.
Sometimes he comes up out of the depths and speaks.
He talks of death with an imaginative lucidity which sounds like actual experience.
Sometimes he sees it... And as he gazes, his pupils suddenly distend.
But he will not, he cannot make up his mind....
He wants to suffer a little longer.
I draw near to his bed in the gathering darkness. His breathing is so light that suddenly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of

anxiety.

Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes.
Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles and says:
"What white teeth you have!"
Then he dreams, as if he were dying.
Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, my brother, when you were driving the plough into your little plot of brown earth?
Here you are, enduring a death-agony of five months swathed in these livid wrappings, without even the rewards that are given to

others.

Your breast, your shroud must be bare of even the humblest of the rewards of valour, Carre.
It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope.
But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so I record them thus at length.
Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there, stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down

over his eyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine.

He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and laughs more.
I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks at it himself; he no longer feels it.
He will forget it even more utterly after a while, and he will live as if it were natural enough for a man to live with a stiff, distorted

limb.

Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, Lerondeau. But the world must not forget them.
And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with a fine new pink colour in his freckled cheeks.
Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau leaves us to-morrow.

MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS

I
Were modesty banished from the rest of the earth, it would no doubt find a refuge in Mouchon's heart.
I see him still as he arrived, on a stretcher full of little pebbles, with his mud be-plastered coat, and his handsome, honest face, like

that of a well-behaved child.

"You must excuse me," he said; "we can't keep ourselves very clean."
"Have you any lice?" asks the orderly, as he undresses him.
Mouchon flushes and looks uneasy.
"Well, if I have, they don't really belong to me."
He has none, but he has a broken leg, "due to a torpedo."
The orderly cuts open his trouser, and I tell him to take off the boot. Mouchon puts out his hand, and says diffidently:
"Never mind the boot."
"But, my good fellow, we can't dress your leg without taking off your boot."
Then Mouchon, red and confused, objects:
"But if you take off the boot, I'm afraid my foot will smell...."
I have often thought of this answer. And believe me, Mouchon, I have not yet met the prince who is worthy to take off your boots

and wash your humble feet.

II
With his forceps the doctor lays hold carefully of a mass of bloody dressings, and draws them gently out of a gaping wound in the

abdomen. A ray of sunshine lights him at his work, and the whole of the frail shed trembles to the roar of the cannon.

"I am a big china-dealer," murmurs the patient. "You come from Paris, and I do, too. Save me, and you shall see.... I'll give you a

fine piece of china."

The plugs are coming out by degrees; the forceps glitter, and the ray of sunshine seems to tremble under the cannonade, as do the

floor, the walls, the light roof, the whole earth, the whole universe, drunk with fatigue.

Suddenly, from the depths of space, a whining sound arises, swells, rends the air above the shed, and the shell bursts a few yards

off, with the sound of a cracked object breaking.

The thin walls seem to quiver under the pressure of the air. The doctor makes a slight movement of his head, as if to see, after all,

where the thing fell.

Then the china-dealer, who noted the movement, says in a quiet voice:
"Don't take any notice of those small things, they don't do any harm. Only save me, and I will give you a beautiful piece of china or

earthenware, whichever you like."

III
The root of the evil is not so much the shattered leg, as the little wound in the arm, from which so much good blood was lost.
With his livid lips, no longer distinguishable from the rest of his face, and the immense black pupils of his eyes, the man shows a

countenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, which will not give in till the last moment. He contemplates the ravages of his body almost
severely, and without illusion, and watching the surgeons as they scrub their hands, he says in a grave voice:

"Tell my wife that my last thoughts were of her and our children."
Ah! it was not a veiled question, for, without a moment's hesitation, he allows us to put the mask over his face.
The solemn words seem still to echo through the ward:
"Tell my wife..."

That manly face is not the face of one who could be deceived by soft words and consoling phrases. The white blouse turns away.

The surgeon's eyes grow dim behind his spectacles, and in solemn tones he replies:

"We will not fail to do so, friend."
The patient's eyelids flutter—as one waves a handkerchief from the deck of a departing steamer—then, breathing in the ether

steadily, he falls into a dark slumber.

He never wakes, and we keep our promise to him.
IV
A few days before the death of Tricot, a very annoying thing happened to him; a small excrescence, a kind of pimple, appeared on

the side of his nose.

Tricot had suffered greatly; only some fragments of his hands remained; but, above all, he had a great opening in his side, a kind of

fetid mouth, through which the will to live seemed to evaporate.

Coughing, spitting, looking about with wide, agonised eyes in search of elusive breath, having no hands to scratch oneself with, being

unable to eat unaided, and further, never having the smallest desire to eat—could this be called living? And yet Tricot never gave in. He
waged his own war with the divine patience of a man who had waged the great world war, and who knows that victory will not come
right away.

But Tricot had neither allies nor reserves; he was all alone, so wasted and so exhausted that the day came when he passed almost

imperceptibly from the state of a wounded to that of a dying man.

And it was just at this moment that the pimple appeared.
Tricot had borne the greatest sufferings courageously; but he seemed to have no strength to bear this slight addition to his woes.
"Monsieur," stammered the orderly who had charge of him, utterly dejected, "I tell you, that pimple is the spark that makes the cup

overflow."

And in truth the cup overflowed. This misfortune was too much. Tricot began to complain, and from that moment I felt that he was

doomed.

I asked him several times a day, thinking of all his wounds: "How are you, old fellow?" And he, thinking of nothing but the pimple,

answered always:

"Very bad, very bad! The pimple is getting bigger."
It was true. The pimple had come to a head, and I wanted to prick it.
Tricot, who had allowed us to cut into his chest without an anaesthetic, exclaimed with tears:
"No, no more operations! I won't have any more operations."
All day long he lamented about his pimple, and the following night he died.
"It was a bad pimple," said the orderly; "it was that which killed him."
Alas! It was not a very "bad pimple," but no doubt it killed him.
V
Mehay was nearly killed, but he did not die; so no great harm was done.
The bullet went through his helmet, and only touched the bone. The brain is all right. So much the better.
No sooner had Mehay come to, and hiccoughed a little in memory of the chloroform, than he began to look round with interest at all

that was happening about him.

Three days after the operation, Mehay got up. It would have been useless to forbid this proceeding. Mehay would have disobeyed

orders for the first time in his life. We could not even think of taking away his clothes. The brave man never lacks clothes.

Mehay accordingly got up, and his illness was a thing of the past.
Every morning, Mehay rises before day-break and seizes a broom. Rapidly and thoroughly, he makes the ward as dean as his own

heart. He never forgets any corner, and he manages to pass the brush gently under the beds without waking his sleeping comrades, and
without disturbing those who are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins or towels, and he is as gentle as a woman when he helps to
dress Vossaert, whose limbs are numb and painful.

At eight o'clock, the ward is in perfect order, and as the dressings are about to begin, Mehay suddenly appears in a fine clean

apron. He watches my hands carefully as they come and go, and he is always in the right place to hand the dressing to the forceps, to
pour out the spirit, or to lend a hand with a bandage, for he very soon learned to bandage skilfully.

He does not say a word; he just looks. The bit of his forehead that shows under his own bandages is wrinkled with the earnestness

of his attention—and he has those blue marks by which we recognise the miner.

Sometimes it is his turn to have a dressing. But scarcely is it completed when he is up again with his apron before him, silently busy.
At eleven o'clock, Mehay disappears. He has gone, perhaps, to get a breath of fresh air? Oh, no! Here he is back again with a

trayful of bowls. And he hands round the soup.

In the evening he hands the thermometer. He helps the orderlies so much that he leaves them very little to do.
All this time the bones of his skull are at work under his bandages, and the red flesh is growing. But we are not to trouble about that:

it will manage all alone. The man, however, cannot be idle. He works, and trusts to his blood, "which is healthy."

In the evening, when the ward is lighted by a night-light, and I come in on tiptoe to give a last look round, I hear a voice laboriously

spelling: "B-O, Bo; B-I, Bi; N-E, Ne, Bobine." It is Mehay, learning to read before going to bed.

VI

A lamp has been left alight, because the men are not asleep yet, and they are allowed to smoke for a while. It would be no fun to

smoke, unless one could see the smoke.

The former bedroom of the mistress of the house makes a very light, very clean ward. Under the draperies which have been

fastened up to the ceiling and covered with sheets, old Louarn lies motionless, waiting for his three shattered limbs to mend. He is
smoking a cigarette, the ash from which falls upon his breast. Apologising for the little heaps of dirt that make his bed the despair of the
orderlies, he says to me:

"You know, a Breton ought to be a bit dirty."
I touch the weight attached to his thigh, and he exclaims:
"Ma doue! Ma doue! Caste! Caste!"
These are oaths of a kind, of his own coining, which make every one laugh, and himself the first. He adds, as he does every day:
"Doctor, you never hurt me so much before as you have done this time."
Then he laughs again.
Lens is not asleep yet, but he is as silent as usual. He has scarcely uttered twenty words in three weeks.
In a corner, Mehay patiently repeats: "P-A, Pa," and the orderly who is teaching him to read presses his forefinger on the soiled

page.

I make my way towards Croin, Octave. I sit down by the bed in silence.
Croin turns a face half hidden by bandages to me, and puts a leg damp with sweat out from under the blankets, for fever runs high

just at this time. He too, is silent; he knows as well as I do that he is not going on well; but all the same, he hopes I shall go away
without speaking to him.

No. I must tell him. I bend over him and murmur certain things.
He listens, and his chin begins to tremble, his boyish chin, which is covered with a soft, fair down.
Then, with the accent of his province, he says in a tearful, hesitating voice:
"I have already given an eye, must I give a hand too?"
His one remaining eye fills with tears. And seeing the sound hand, I press it gently before I go.
VII
When I put my fingers near his injured eye, Croin recoils a little.
"Don't be afraid," I say to him.
"Oh, I'm not afraid!"
And he adds proudly:
"When a chap has lived on Hill 108, he can't ever be afraid of anything again."
"Then why do you wince?"
"It's just my head moving back of its own accord. I never think of it."
And it is true; the man is not afraid, but his flesh recoils.
When the bandage is properly adjusted, what remains visible of Groin's face is young, agreeable, charming. I note this with

satisfaction, and say to him:

"There's not much damage done on this side. We'll patch you up so well that you will still be able to make conquests."
He smiles, touches his bandage, looks at his mutilated arm, seems to lose himself for a while in memories, and murmurs:
"May be. But the girls will never come after me again as they used to..."
VIII
"The skin is beginning to form over the new flesh. A few weeks more, and then a wooden leg. You will run along like a rabbit."
Plaquet essays a little dry laugh which means neither yes nor no, but which reveals a great timidity, and something else, a great

anxiety.

"For Sundays, you can have an artificial leg. You put a boot on it. The trouser hides it all. It won't show a bit."
The wounded man shakes his head slightly, and listens with a gentle, incredulous smile.
"With an artificial leg, Plaquet, you will, of course, be able to go out. It will be almost as it was before."
Plaquet shakes his head again, and says in a low voice:
"Oh, I shall never go out!"
"But with a good artificial leg, Plaquet, you will be able to walk almost as well as before. Why shouldn't you go out?"
Plaquet hesitates and remains silent.
"Why?"
Then in an almost inaudible voice he replies:
"I will never go out. I should be ashamed."
Plaquet will wear a medal on his breast. He is a brave soldier, and by no means a fool. But there are very complex feelings which

we must not judge too hastily.

IX
In the corner of the ward there is a little plank bed which is like all the other little beds. But buried between its sheets there is the

smile of Mathouillet, which is like no other smile.

Mathouillet, after throwing a good many bombs, at last got one himself. In this disastrous adventure, he lost part of his thigh,

received several wounds, and gradually became deaf. Such is the fate of bombardier-grenadier Mathouillet.

The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, beardless face, which for many weeks must have expressed great suffering, and, which is

now beginning to show a little satisfaction.

But Mathouillet hears so badly that when one speaks to him he only smiles in answer.
If I come into the ward, Mathouillet's smile awaits and welcomes me. When the dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with a smile.

If I look at the temperature chart, Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not questioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but his smile says a
number of unspoken things that I understand perfectly. Conversation is difficult, on account of this unfortunate deafness—that is to say,
conversation as usually carried on. But we two, happily, have no need of words. For some time past, certain smiles have been enough
for us. And Mathouillet smiles, not only with his eyes or with his lips, but with his nose, his beardless chin, his broad, smooth forehead,
crowned by the pale hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish face.

Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats at the table, with his comrades. To call him to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, which

reaches the ear of the bombardier-grenadier.

He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the floor, and examines all the laughing faces. As he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and

this time his smile betrays embarrassment and confusion.

Coming very close to him, I say loudly:
"Your comrades are calling you to dinner, my boy."
"Yes, yes," he replies, "but because they know I am deaf, they sometimes try to play tricks on me."
His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this impromptu confidence. Then he makes up his mind to sit down, after interrogating me with

his most affectionate smile.

X
Once upon a time, Paga would have been called un type; now he is un numero. This means that he is an original, that his ways of

considering and practising life are unusual; and as life here is reduced entirely to terms of suffering, it means that his manner of suffering
differs from that of other people.

From the very beginning, during those hard moments when the wounded man lies plunged in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga

distinguished himself by some remarkable eccentricities.

Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was the report on Paga's hospital sheet.
Now the leg was not doing at all well. Every morning, the good head doctor stared at the swollen flesh with his little round

discoloured eyes and said: "Come, we must just wait till to-morrow." But Paga did not want to wait.

Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his southern accent exaggerated by approaching delirium, he said, as soon as we came to

see him.

"My wish, my wish! You know my wish, doctor."
Then, lower, with a kind of passion:
"I want you to cut it off, you know. I want you to cut this leg. Oh! I shan't be happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it off."
We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business was very successfully arranged. I even feel sure that this leg became quite a respectable

limb again.

I am bound to say Paga understood that he had meddled with things which did not concern him. He nevertheless continued to offer

imperative advice as to the manner in which he wished to be nursed.

"Don't pull off the dressings! I won't have it. Do you hear, doctor? Don't pull. I won't have it."
Then he would begin to tremble nervously all over his body and to say:
"I am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, I am calm. Doctor, see, I am quite calm."
Meantime the dressings were gradually loosening under a trickle of water, and Paga muttered between his teeth:
"He's pulling, he's pulling.... Oh, the cruel man! I won't have it, I won't have it."
Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks:
"That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, see, Brugneau: the dressings have come away. Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings are

loosened."

He clapped his hands, possessed by a furtive joy; then he suddenly became conscious, and with a deep furrow between his brows,

he began to give orders again.

"Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. Take away those forceps, doctor, take them away."
Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their work, the tincture of iodine performed its chilly function; then Paga yelled:
"Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me."
With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he beat upon the air, and seized haphazard upon the first blouse that passed. Then he would

embrace it frantically.

Thus it happened that he once showered kisses on Michelet's hands, objects by no means suitable for such a demonstration.

Michelet said, laughing:

"Come, stop it; my hands are dirty."
And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's bare, hairy arms, saying distractedly:

"If your hands are dirty, your arms are all right."
Alas, what has become of all those who, during days and nights of patient labour, I saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of the

night and coming back again to joy? What has become of the smouldering faggot which an ardent breath finally kindled into flame?

What became of you, precious lives, poor wonderful souls, for whom I fought so many obscure great battles, and who went off

again into the realm of adventure?

You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do you remember the time when I used to dress your two wounds alternately, and when

you said to me with great severity:

"The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the day for the foot."
XI
Sergeant Lecolle is distinguished by a huge black beard, which fails to give a ferocious expression to the gentlest face in the world.
He arrived the day little Delporte died, and scarcely had he emerged from the dark sleep when, opening his eyes, he saw Delporte

die.

I went to speak to him several times. He looked so exhausted, his black beard was so mournful that I kept on telling him: "Sergeant,

your wound is not serious."

Each time he shook his head as if to say that he took but little interest in the matter, and tried to close his eyes.
Lecolle is too nervous; he was not able to close his eyes, and he saw Delporte dead, and he had been obliged to witness all

Delporte's death agony; for when one has a wound in the right shoulder, one can only lie upon the left shoulder.

The ward was full, I could not change the sergeant's place, and yet I should have liked to let him be alone all day with his own pain.
Now Lecolle is better; he feels better without much exuberance, with a seriousness which knows and foresees the bufferings of

Fate.

Lecolle was a stenographer "in life." We are no longer "in life," but the good stenographer retains his principles. When his wounds

are dressed, he looks carefully at the little watch on his wrist. He moans at intervals, and stops suddenly to say:

"It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen the dressings. Yesterday, you took sixty-two seconds."
His first words after the operation were:
"Will you please tell me how many minutes I was unconscious?"
XII
I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining the chapel. A band of crippled men, returning from Germany after a long captivity, had

just been brought in there.

There were some fifty of them, all looking with delighted eyes at the walls, the benches, the telephone, all the modest objects in this

waiting-room, objects which are so much more attractive under the light of France than in harsh exile.

The waiting-room seemed to have been transformed into a museum of misery: there were blind men, legless and armless men,

paralysed men, their faces ravaged by fire and powder.

A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm with an e...